Islamist ideology has jeopardised learning and may have put children at risk of radicalisation. Sian Griffiths and Richard Kerbaj report

For Amir Ahmed, the worries about his daughter’s school started last December.
“She came home and said there were no Christmas festivities — no cards, no
tree, no play — and she was sad because she had found the annual
celebrations to be fun in the past,” he explained.

The children of Oldknow Academy in Birmingham did not make Easter cards this
month either. In religious education lessons they are taught only about
Islam. Parents have been told that £15,000 is to be raised to open a Friday
prayer club.

“All these things taken together made me concerned,” said Ahmed, who has seen
Oldknow turn from a secular state school where his older children thrived to
an academy free from local authority control where tension is rising.

The latest argument came when Ahmed (not his real name) asked why his daughter
had been enrolled in compulsory Arabic lessons. He wanted to know whether
she